


Jetsam

by standalone



Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [12]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Grantaire has a cold, M/M, bed talk, this one's just a conversation folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 05:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17482055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Two fucking years.





	Jetsam

**__** _In the dark, a voice is sometimes less—a sound or a thought, hard to say when it’s mixed in with the neighboring half-truth of dreams. The bedroom is cold. Only under the heaped blankets is there warmth, two piles of it, their wet, snuffly exhalations condensing in the air._

—I know you’re still awake. What’s going on?

—Two years.

—Yeah... Oh. Fuck. Really?

—Two whole years.

—I was thinking it was November that—

—We’re halfway done. 

—There’s an end-date?

—If he doesn’t get impeached first. Or attacked by his own empty excuse for a heart. 

—Ohhhh.

—I want to see him rot, Grantaire. Is that fucked up? I don’t think I’m a person who likes vengeance; I think I tell myself stories that I’m better than that. But I want to see this shitbag fester in some squalid hole till the end of time. Hell, I want him _kept alive_ specifically so that he can suffer longer. 

—Babe. 

—I thought I could stop this. Grantaire, I thought I could. We could. All of us. I thought we’d be enough.

—It’s not your fault, babe.

—I think sometimes, _What if I was going through this without you?_

—You’d miss these dulcet tones.

—I only found you because we were desperate. Or _I_ was, and you took pity on me.

—It was like you were on fire.

—I felt like I was. Burning up. Or drowning. Where’d that go? The fury?

—Every single person who heard Lamarque’s shutdown speech is still recovering, Enjolras. You’re channeling that shit, now. People used to love the fire because it was you, but you’re getting so fucking good. It’s ’cause it’s not about you, now. 

—It’s always about me.

—Says the guy who gave me this fucking cold and won’t let me sleep. I _know._ I _get it_.

—I love you.

—You used to exhort other people, implore them to seek greatness, whatever—but it was them wanting _you_ to approve. Them wanting to be the kind of people _you_ said they could be. Or the senator, using your words. But now you don’t want people doing shit because of you.

—A professional manipulator.

—It’s like you broke off one of the legs of the stool you were giving them, so it went flat and they had to stand up by themselves and survey the wreckage.

—You do love a visual metaphor.

—What does Lamarque think about the new style?

—You know, she said, ‘You don’t make friends with facts, Enjolras.’ And then she tried out a couple lines, and was like, ‘Good thing everyone likes me already.’

— _I_ like her.

—She’s a living—

—I like you better.

—A living _legend_. What she’s lived through. Things are gonna get better, right?

—Sometimes. They'll seem like it.

—You’re a hard man, Grantaire.

—You noticed.

—I should let you sleep. You sound terrible.

—Come here.

_The blankets lump up and settle again. Beneath them, pressed between two bodies, is a space so brilliantly warm that the two will wake up sweaty before morning and spread apart again, one gripping the other’s wrist for continuity across the humid midlands of their bed. It is late January of another year, and they are no measurable fraction of done._

**Author's Note:**

> It's just a tiny one this time, but I feel that the occasion warrants some sort of notice.
> 
> Look at us, still here.


End file.
